Dr Nancy Priston

I’ve spent the last couple of days in the forest with some local guys from the village of Watambo collecting honey with them.

Local people go into the forests to harvest honey from the wild Giant Honey Bee (Apis dorsata). The bees make large hanging honey-comb nests and then roost on the outside of the comb so all you see is a mass of moving bees hanging from the branches. They only select certain branches at specific heights, angles and light levels and will often return to them year after year if harvested carefully. Local honey collectors have their own trees which they mark so others know not to harvest from them and can harvest up to twice a year from one colony. Many of the nests are located deep in the forest though so require quite a trek to get to them. Once they find a nest that’s ready to harvest they prepare a bamboo smoker using old dead bamboo which they split and wrap around a smaller bamboo within which they carve a hole to hold the dried bits of leaf and fibre used to start the fire and create smoke. They then wrap this in leaves which are tied tightly. The whole smoker is attached to a bamboo pole and tied to some bark rope to be hauled up in to the tree. After about 5 hours trekking we found a bee’s nest on the first day, but sadly it had no honey. So we tried again the next day and after another long trek we found a nest with honey. The two collectors – Jahu and La Didi, made up a smoker and then Jahu climbed up about 30m into the tree and hauled the lit smoker up to him.Using the bamboo pole he manouvered it under the nest and then waited for the smoke to make the bee’s leave the honeycomb.

After about 20 mins and a lot of angry bees the honey comb was revealed and La didi climbed right up 40m into the canopy and hauled up a bucket to collect the honey comb. He lowered it back down to Jahu and thankfully we had some honey! The honey is extracted by hand (by squeezing the comb) and put into a jerrycan. It’s usually transferred to litre or half litre bottles and then sold at he side of the road – currently it’s about 80,000rp for a bottle (twice last year’s price).  It’s a really important, and sustainable, forest resource for local people and it is divine!